FMB - Hole In The Plan

Brian Berry - Managing Director of the Federation of Master Builders

If you are trying to change the fabric of the countries housing stock. enhance it, make it better. The people who we need to listen to (aside from home owners 😇), are the people who work on those homes every. Single. Day.

A recent survey completed on behalf of the Federation of Master Builders suggests confidence in a rollout of retrofit is going to be hampered because of a lack of consumer buy in.

Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB, commented:

“What this research clearly shows is that SME builders across the country stand ready to deliver the retrofit revolution the UK desperately needs. However, presently there is limited demand from consumers to actually carry out the work on their homes.

With the Kings speech slightly light on details, retrofit was possibly at the very back of the queue behind the ideas of a new builds;

Regulatory misfiring and a lack of engagement from consumers suggests that the failure to promote retrofit, the low hanging fruit of reducing energy demand - is likely to be missed in the rush to build ego boosting estates. Within the FMB report the findings reflect further misgivings.

Prof. Alice Owen, Director of the Sustainability Research Institute, Leeds University said:

“This research brings to light the opinions of small, local building firms who are often forgotten in the discussions of how we reduce home energy bills. It will be this group that end up doing the work of upgrading – retrofitting - millions of the nation’s homes, so their opinions matter. It appears there is work to do to ensure that the nation’s local builders are able to retrofit homes, not least in getting clear guidance from Government on a robust set of standards to support the rollout. However, the builders themselves seem ready and willing to take up the challenge; they need help in creating the real market demand that will lead to action.”

We conducted a straw pole of 5 local building firms the day the FMB statement and report came out. The anecdotes where strikingly similar. "Why would be look for work when we're stacked out on builds as it is?" one builder had no space for bookings until November. Are these really the people who have capacity for work which isn't even in demand?

Prof. Gavin Killip, Professor of Buildings & Energy Policy at Nottingham Trent University said:

“The findings of this research are a valuable guide for how government and business must move forward with plans for retrofitting the UK’s homes. Clearly if we are to meet climate targets, consumer incentives to instil confidence to upgrade homes will be a necessity and this in turn will create a much-needed market for the builders delivering it. There is huge potential for businesses growth, with the added benefits of improved standards, local job creation, warmer homes, reduced bills and ultimately lower emissions and healthier people - there just needs to be an ambitious plan to make it a reality.”

With many leading lights of the retrofit sector demanding a generational mind shift in approaching retrofit the message was echoed in this reply from Brian Berry

“The Government needs to set out a long-term delivery plan to improve the energy efficiency of all our homes. The skills, investment, and benefits needed to upgrade the nation’s 29 million draughty and ageing homes effectively amounts to a major infrastructure project and should be treated as such."

Berry said consumers are being let down;

"In the short term, the Government needs to help improve consumer information and provide a range of targeted financial incentives to help kickstart the retrofit market. "

We know from the work of Dr Yekhaterina and the NRH that homeowners are still associating retrofit with costly, unwelcome and intrusive methods. Brian Berry adds;

"Without better independent information many homeowners won’t know where to start and who to employ which in turn means builders will not train up their workforce."

And if that wasn't a deafening enough endorsement of our previous article, Berry reflects the concerns of the Retrofit Demand Gap;

"What is concerning is the fact that even if the issue of demand is settled there isn’t a sufficient number of competent builders to carry out the work. The standards that underpin retrofitting need to be made clear, as do the routes to train towards them. A long term skills plan to encourage more people into the building workforce will be fundamental to making all of this work.”

Echoing the desire and frustrations of the training and assessor experts at the Retrofit Academy.

We know that the idea of new builds was going to be championed in the Kings Speech but as we discussed in this magazine already, house building is not the answer.

Brian Berry perfectly summed up the mood of retrofit experts in the UK when he exposed a fail, in the speech from parliament;

“One startling omission is the lack of plans to upgrade the existing housing stock. We had been expecting to see a bold plan to retrofit five million homes to make them greener and more energy efficient but clearly the purse strings have not been opened enough to allow for this. While we should be looking to build more homes we mustn’t take our eye of the existing housing stock, which is the oldest and leakiest in Europe.”

We wait to see how Labour, and the new government take up the challenge of retrofit or will we be left in the shadow of rapacious house building programmes?

More importantly who, what of how are we going to generate demand. If there was a brick shaped bat signal available, it's time to switch it on commissioner.